It's been one month since WGLT and National Public Radio stations across the country lost federal funding through the now-defunct Corporation for Public Broadcasting [CPB].
During a visit to WGLT ahead of the station's Radio Faces fundraiser on Thursday, NPR CEO Katherine Maher expressed optimism about public media's future, but cautioned there are many challenges ahead.
“I think we’re seeing real resilience in the network in terms of the commitment of our stations, station leaders, station journalists around continuing their work for the communities they serve,” Maher said in an interview on WGLT’s Sound Ideas.
“Realistically, we are also seeing hardship. We are seeing stations making difficult decisions about what they can fund and what they can’t. We’re seeing people have to pull back from programs they’ve been committed to for their local communities."
It's unclear, Maher said, how many will stations survive with making substantial changes, suggesting 60 to 70 stations may go off the air. That’s about one-fourth of NPR-member stations across the country.
Federal funding makes up a sizable portion of many smaller station's budgets. It's about 10% of WGLT's annual funding.
Maher noted 1 in 5 Americans live in communities without local news coverage, except from public media.
Redefining radio
Maher said public radio can be resilient for the next five to 10 years, but the funding cut may require public radio to redefine itself.
“While radio is really important and I’m an old-school radio fan, we also have to recognize that [the] future might look different and it’s up to us to seize and decide how we want to create it,” she said.
More than half of NPR's weekly audience of 46 million consumers comes from digital platforms such as streaming and podcasts versus terrestrial radio, said Maher, adding the lack of federal funding also will require NPR and its member stations to be increasingly flexible and look for new ways to collaborate.
“There is always an opportunity in crisis, and we may be having conversations we wouldn’t otherwise be having in our network,” she said, noting WHYY in Philadelphia has stepped in to acquire WPSU in State College, Pennsylvania as one effort to avoid a station going out of business.
In the spotlight
Maher was thrust into the national spotlight when efforts to defund public media intensified shortly after Donald Trump returned to the White House in January.
She testified before Congress in April to defend federal funding and address allegations of editorial bias from Republican lawmakers who were plotting to strip funding from both NPR and PBS through the CPB.
NPR later sued the Trump administration over an executive order that sought to bar Congressionally-appropriated funding for NPR and PBS. The litigation, which WGLT joined, became a mostly symbolic fight over the First Amendment once Congress voted to strip funding it already had approved.
NPR also has taken the CPB to court, alleging it caved to political pressure from the Trump administration when it reneged on a $36 million contract with NPR to run satellite distribution for public radio stations.
A judge will hear the case in December.
The string of crises that have enveloped much of Maher’s first 19 months as CEO has diverted attention from other broader industry concerns, Maher said, including eroding trust in journalism.
She said the decline in local media in much of the country, increased political polarization, media consumption driven by algorithms, all require attention.
“Now [we are] beginning to catch our breath and it is an opportunity for us to turn to some of these changes and say ‘What do we do now?’” she asked.
Maher sees journalism as a continuum that has seen public trust rise and fall across generations — rather than an industry that should "hearken back" to a post-war period in the early days of television when there were fewer outlets for news consumers.
Journalism award
Maher recently received the WM Kiplinger Distinguished Contributions to Journalism Award, an honor that’s gone previously to the likes of Bob Woodward, Helen Thomas and Scott Simon.
One of the judges noted “Ms. Maher has championed the crucial importance of carefully reported, edited and curated information in the functioning of a democracy.”
“I’m still a little surprised and humbled by it," she said. "It was certainly very unexpected and given the tumultuous year we have, I think it’s all the more meaningful. I do believe that it’s something that I share with all of my colleagues.”
Departures
A number of high-profile journalists have left NPR in recent years, including Ari Shapiro, Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Audie Cornish, and Noel King.
Maher said the string of departures does not raise concern about NPR's ability to keep its top talent and said the news organization can take pride that the journalists developed their careers and name recognition at NPR before going to off to do great things elsewhere.
“I think it’s important that we see ourselves as part of that ecosystem, and that we know that our talent can compete in that ecosystem and that we are as great to work and as great a place to break news as anywhere else,” she said.
